Studies in

Identity is the most challenging subject in the modern world due to the flood of technology in the second half of the twentieth century, coupled with other post-modernist phenomena which have impacted our lives. Ibrahim Nasrollah, the renowned Palestinian author, in a novel titled: Harb al-Kalb al-Thaniah (The Second Dog War) has addressed this challenge through literature. In this novel, he has depicted the future of human life through an imaginary world, using magical realism. The basic concept of the novel is “Simulation”. This phenomenon enters the world of the story and spreads among the people. Day by day the people become more and more like each other and step by step, the fraudulence, violence and conflict in society increase and begin to take over. Through magic realism and using the descriptive –analytical approach to the novel, this paper seeks to study this process as an individual action leads to great human disaster.

Since its emergence, novel has been concerned with the concept of freedom in relation to society. Kurds, Masters without Horses deals with several concepts such as freedom, imagination, society and identity. The Arabic novel, refusing to be pushed into social margins, has become a safety valve that prevents nations from falling into the pit of oblivion. The novel takes place in a complex world where freedom is the concern and goal of literature and identity is the concern of the writer. In this context, the main question concenrs the challenges of the Arabic novel in relation to identity, freedom and history. Is the novel a cultural necessity for freedom? Is it rooted in a cultural need, without which it is impossible to live? Is this the same anti-historical novel crafted by official institutions under the name of the History of the Utopia which is full of lies? Does the novel have the power to speak of the unspoken history and the power to protect the bridges of dialogue that are getting narrower and narrower every day? This article tries to study the cultural issues presented in novel from a critical framework. The novel is a prime example ethnic identity narration as it relates the pains and sufferings of the Kurds. Despite the language of the novel, which is devoid of poetic overtones and decorations, sometimes it tedious and difficult to understand it. The novel contains an implicit appeal which invites the reader to read the novel up to the end. It is a novel that expresses the fate of a nation and the oppression it has received from other countries. As with the protagonist, readers witness the redefinition of ethnic identity in this novel.

Identity, in the sense of who one is, defines a person's dialectical relationship with the outside world, and is regarded as an example of the quality of people's behavior in society. Among the sociologists, Sheldon Stryker has linked identity with emotions and believes that among the identities formed in a person, an identity that she/he experiences extreme positive or negative emotions in relation to the roles, people and social situations aligned with it, becomes a salient identity. Considering that narrative literature has a wide scope in reflecting social identity; the novel Vatan Men Zujaj "Homeland of the Glass" written by Yasmina Saleh, an Algerian author, focuses on identity questions that occur in the form of multiple social roles, and portrays an intertwined series of influences of Algerian society on the protagonist's choice of identity. The present research uses content analysis and text-oriented reading based on Stryker's theory to examine the social structure of the target society and the emotions generated from it, which play a role in salience of identity. The findings of the study indicate that the protagonist of the story has achieved common emotional meanings through effective communication with the educated stratum of the society such as his schoolteacher, experience of university environment, and communication with journalist colleagues who have increased his scope of social awareness. This has also led to his commitment to collective groups and his inclination to social roles including journalism, which is in line with his salient identity as "social police". Also, the numerous situations that have been effective in reproducing the emotions of the protagonist are qualitatively noticeable in the canonization of identity.
 

In Erik Homburger Erikson's theory of psychosocial development, adolescence is the fifth stage. The main problem of this stage is the identity crisis, although not in its critical sense. In this article, identity is explored based on this theory in the Arabic young adult novel Cappuccino and the Persian Call Me Ziba. The novel Cappuccino is written by Fatima Sharafeddin, a Lebanese writer, and Call Me Ziba, is written by Farhad Hassanzadeh, an Iranian writer. The atmosphere of both novels is narrated in contemporary era. The main characters in Cappuccino are a young girl and a young boy, and the main character in Call Me Ziba is a young girl. These characters are involved in challenges and try to solve them. In Cappuccino, family violence of men against women is the main theme. Call Me Ziba portrays the most acute life conditions for adolescents and the possibility of getting rid of them. Paying attention to adolescence in order to form a successful identity has been the concern of many non-literary researches, but in literary studies, less attention has been paid to this period and the notion of identity; Therefore, in this research, the two novels are examined by using Erikson's theory, descriptive-analytical method, and the comparative literature approach. The results indicate that in the novels Cappuccino and Call Me Ziba, adolescent characteristics are placed in three categories based on Erikson's psychosocial development theory: 1) Identity crisis; 2) Identity-seeking, which itself includes the subcategories of identification, receiving social support and adolescent protest against the value system of adults in adolescence; and 3) Fidelity. Upon examining the place of identity and identity challenges of youngs in the novels Cappuccino and Call Me Ziba, it can be concluded that encouragement to patience, love of family, respect for elders, support of family members, understanding of family's unfavorable economic situation, and fidelity to family members are emphasized a lot.